On 7 December 2022, ConPolicy Project Manager Dr. Annette Cerulli-Harms was invited to take part in the High Level Expert Group Meeting on 'Nudges as Enablers of Sustainable Living: Identifying their Potential and Legal Challenges'. The expert group was organised by the European Law Institute (ELI) with the objective to discuss potentials and legal challenges of nudges as well as to identify a potential new project on which the ELI could focus in the near future.
The expert group was composed of numerous well-known scholars spanning theory, philosophy, boosting, critique on nudges and legal experts among which „Nudge“ author Prof. Dr. Cass Sunstein. Cass Sunstein explained the FEAST Framework for Behaviour Change. FEAST is an acronym standing for
- Desired actions should be FUN.
- To support sustainable behaviour, the right choice should be the EASY choice
- Desired choices should be made ATTRACTIVE.
- People are SOCIAL and tend to imitate others so if a majority of people does something, others will likely follow.
- The right TIMING of nudging people is important.
Annette Cerulli-Harms spoke on the potential of nudges in the area of sustainable consumption. She brought attention to the 'attitude-behaviour gap': the gap between what people plan or are willing to do and what they really do. She then underlined the difference between the sustainability area and other areas: usually, the effects of one’s behavior regard them personally – for example reaping the health benefits of losing weight, whereas, in the sustainability area, people may never see the impacts of their own choices. She stressed the need to bridge the gap and said that nudges and choice architecture can serve this purpose.
The group concluded the ELI should not exclusively focus on nudging but investigate behavioural science tools more broadly. Several ideas for new projects emerged including scrutinizing the validity of green defaults, assessing the circumstances under which nudges are acceptable to the public or investigating on whether there is a need to “nudge” institution and verify legal frameworks on how legislation is currently implemented and whether unconscious defaults work as intended.
More information on the expert group is available here on the Website of the European Law Institute.